


Heads or Tails

by potentiality_26



Category: Thorne (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Fix-It, Gen, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 02:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15354336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potentiality_26/pseuds/potentiality_26
Summary: “You’ll be all right, you’ll make it,” Hendricks kept saying.But she didn’t feel like she was going to make it.  She had been in a lot of pain before, but now she mostly felt numb.  She had an idea that that wasn’t a good sign.Sarah in the aftermath.





	Heads or Tails

**Author's Note:**

> Sarah's POV of the events referenced in [Wasting Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119315). Written for the H/C bingo prompt "major illness or injury".
> 
> Not Brit-picked.

Life was all made up of choices.  Turn right or left, call heads or tails, join the police and try to make the world a better place than you found it.  Move to the murder squad looking for more action, more recognition, more _something_ that would fill up that hole inside of you that just... aches.  Acknowledge that maybe you still wouldn't find it.    

Sarah knew all about choices.  She knew all about how the ones she made in her life had led her to exactly where she was now.  And she knew all about how to take responsibility for her mistakes- at least, when she was clean she did.  But she was never clean often enough that she really expected any of those mistakes to finally come back and bite her.  This, though... this was definitely her mistakes finally coming back to bite her. 

_“_ You’ll be all right, you’ll make it,” Hendricks kept saying. 

But she didn’t feel like she was going to make it.  She had been in a lot of pain before, but now she mostly felt numb.  She had an idea that that wasn’t a good sign. 

“Keep pressure there,” Hendricks told Thorne then.  Thorne was holding his bunched-up jacket to her chest.  That was actually one of the first things she had noticed after she was shot.  Funny how not long ago he was firing her.  That she thought anything was funny right then probably wasn't a good sign either.  Hendricks turned back to her.  “You’re gonna be fine, just keep still.”

She wanted him to be right, even though she didn’t think he was, so she tried to hold his eyes, tried to listen to what he was saying and believe it.

“You’ll be all right,” he said again.  "You'll make it."  His face- what she could see of it- started to get fuzzy, and his voice started to get fuzzy too, somehow.  He sounded like he was talking from a very long distance away.  First she could hardly make out what he was saying, and then she couldn't make it out at all- but she figured it might be more variations on the same theme. 

And then she heard Thorne saying something, but she couldn't understand that either.  She couldn't understand much of anything, in fact- but she did think, for a second, that Thorne seemed like he was more worried about Hendricks than he was about her, and she didn’t blame him for it.  Suddenly she didn’t blame him for anything.  There was too much blame going around to lay it at one person's feet, even hers.  And that was a good thought, it really was, but she did not want to it to be her last. 

So she tried to keep focusing, she tried so, so hard- but then everything went black around her, and she didn't really believe that anything would ever come back into focus again.

But- somehow- it did. 

At first, she heard only beeping.  And she was aware of... a fuzziness in her body and in her mind.  Then she opened her eyes, slow, and saw a general mass of white that- slowly- became Phil Hendricks sitting beside her in a hospital room.  Maybe she should have thought of the case first, the job, but she didn’t. 

“Am I okay?” she asked, her voice coming thick and heavy like syrup, her thoughts trailing sluggishly along behind. 

Hendricks eyed her sidelong.  He had a medical journal in his hands and when he looked up from it to her his mouth didn’t smile but his eyes sort of did.  “Not really.  But you will be.”

She shut her eyes.  Even the relief came slow.  She thought now that it might have been nice if it was all over, but when she had believed that she was going to die, when she had been sure of it, she had known exactly how much she wanted to live.  She knew she had to hang onto that in what was coming.

Hendricks seemed to know it too.  He learned over her.  “You’re pretty heavily medicated,” he said.  “Which I know isn't great for someone trying to get clean, but the doctors didn't have a lot of choice.  You will try to get clean, won’t you?”

Thinking still wasn’t easy, but she thought about how much danger she had put herself in, trying to make things right in a way that only made them worse.  She missed the righteous feeling she had when she was high.   It was so much better than the guilt, the gnawing certainty that she would never amount to anything.  It had gone, for a while, when she thought she wouldn’t make it- but it was back now and it choked her.  “Palmer?” she finally asked.  “Did-” _we_ \- “Thorne get him?”

“Yes.”  Hendricks’ look was kind even if he still wasn't properly smiling, and it made her think she could let herself off the hook for not asking before.  It made her think she could let herself off the hook for a lot of things, for now- as long as she could find a way to do better in the future.  “We did."  Then he asked again, " You will try to get clean, won’t you?”

“Yes,” she managed.

“Good.  I haven’t had an actual live patient in a really long time and I’d like it if you stayed that way.”

“I just want to do the right thing.  To help people.  To be good at my job.”  She was afraid she might cry, suddenly, which was a terrifying thought.  “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”  She didn't understand why it had to be so hard, why it had to be hard enough that she turned to the things she had just to get through the day.

“It doesn’t have to be over," he told her, grave now but still kind.  "But you’ve got to meet me halfway.  Help me help you, and we can get through this together, okay?”

“I like the sound of that," she admitted.  "Together.”

“So do I.”  He did smile at her, then, and she managed to smile back.  It felt like a new beginning- and when she drifted off again, knowing that it was just to sleep, that felt like enough.    

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr](http://potentiality-26.tumblr.com/).


End file.
